Sunday, February 24, 2013

Is Open Water Swimming An Endurance Sport?

The primary reasons for starting Openwaterpedia was for a few simple reasons:

1. Wikipedia encourages the addition of entries about people who are notable; but does not allow the addition of individuals who are not considered notable.

While "notable" may be defined in many ways, we believe all open water swimmers are notable for their exploits and courage, no matter their speed, age, background, placing or time.

Therefore, Openwaterpedia was created as a global online resource where open water swimmers of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds could be added, researched and celebrated.

2. Wikipedia's information and links in the open water swimming space frequently were changed by volunteer editors and writers who were not daily keeping up with the frequent changes of the sport. Openwaterpedia enables the open water swimming community to maintain and add constant updates to the swimmers, coaches, pilots, events, products and services of the sport. So when a swimmer accomplishes a feat, no matter what the distance, time or placing, that information can be immediately added to their Openwaterpedia entry.

3. Wikipedia is limited in its understanding and coverage of the rapidly growing aquatic discipline of open water swimming, even if nearly 500,000,000 people visit Wikipedia monthly.

For example, endurance sports is defined by Wikipedia as "a subset of sports in which the goal is prolonged athletic output over an extended distance or for an extended period of time. They are very aerobic by nature." However, Wikipedia does not include open water swimming, channel swimming or marathon swimming as part of its defined endurance sports. Endurance sports in Wikipedia has the following 10 subcategories: cross-country skiing‎, duathlon‎, endurance riding‎, long-distance races‎, marathoning, endurance motor racing‎, racewalking‎, rowing‎, triathlon‎, and ultramarathons‎.

But there is no open water swimming, ice swimming, channel swimming or marathon swimming - which is a recognized Olympic event - listed under Wikipedia's endurance sports. But we know that open water swimming falls entirely within Wikipedia's definition of endurance sports as "a subset of sports in which the goal is prolonged athletic output over an extended distance or for an extended period of time. They are very aerobic by nature."

As an endurance sport, we enjoy an online world in which everyone can freely share in the knowledge of open water swimming, through Openwaterpedia and the innumerable other online sites, blogs and forums.

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The Other Shore follows world record holder and legendary swimmer Diana Nyad as she comes out of a thirty-year retirement to re-attempt an elusive dream: swimming 103 miles non-stop from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage. Her past and present collide in her obsession with a feat that nobody has ever accomplished. At the edge of The Devil’s Triangle, tropical storms, sharks, venomous jellyfish, and one of the strongest ocean currents in the world, all prove to be life-threatening realities. Timothy Wheeler’s documentary brings Diana Nyad’s extraordinary adventure to life as Diana sets out to prove that will and determination are all you need to make the unimaginable possible.LEARN MORE...

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An almanac is essentially a body of knowledge which is so complete that it enables people in different fields to make predictions about the future of their respective industries.

This, for example, was the purpose of the traditional farmers almanacs. It enabled farmers to determine as accurately as possible which crops to plant for the greatest harvests in a given year.

But the farmers almanac was just one example among many. There are, of course, many different kinds of almanacs.

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